My Friend, Myself
by NightmareMyLove
Summary: Whatever happened to Clarisse McClellen? In a world without love, or light or words that have meaning, there is Clarisse, and she is not alone.
1. Chapter 1

My name is Clarisse McClellan. Once the acquaintance of one Guy Montag, the esteemed fireman, I now am far away. I'm not quite sure where I am, but as one insane eighteen year old, I question all that I am. I am a girl for noticing things, a girl for moments and for thoughts and for details that the rest of the world seems to find trivial and pointless.

I know better than that.

No one knows this, but I once had a sister. She's gone now, but she was rather too much like me. Alice was so much like my grandfather and me that they took her away, to some place, probably where I am. If I let my mind wander, I sometimes imagine that we are in the same place of bars on windows and gray jumpsuits and endless tests. I see the two of us smashing our way out of this horrible, detestable, malicious place. Like the cars that wreck themselves on the highway, we could escape into the world and save the books and ideas that locked us away from the world. That's what the told us when we were taken, taken from our home in the middle of the night, my grandfather and me. I watched a helmeted man shoot Grandfather in the chest, shouting "That's what you deserve old man; no one needs your thoughts anymore. People are happy, and thoughts are safe without all that useless knowledge to clutter up their minds. Who cares about the classics, you damn geezer, huh? All we need is four parlor walls and we can live happily."

I cried when they burned him. It was as he would have wanted though, they burned him on top of our books, the beautiful books. I stood on in silence, a fireman holding me in place, making me take in the scene. Moby Dick, Great expectations, The Bible, Shakespeare's Collected Plays… all gone, burned to ash and grime under his body. A fitting death for one so learned.

He and my sister fostered the only love I was ever allowed; reading. They say insanity runs in my family because of it, and I'm inclined to agree. My father, a broken man, was taken two months after I was born, or so my grandfather told me once. He was the one that built our basement library, the one that fire proofed it and sound proofed it and made it my only safe haven. Thank God that it was never discovered. A year after he was gone, my mother committed suicide. I don't remember her face. After all, pictures of the dead are banned.

Author's Note: Hey guys, this is NightmareMyLove, and this is my first post ever. Hope you like it. Give me suggestions if you think you have a detail to add. Maybe someone could recommend me to a beta too? Or volunteer to become a beta? ^_^ thanks a million.

As a side note, this is going to be (hopefully) a foray into the deepest places of the darkest parts of the human mind, and why we do what we do. I intend for the effect of this story to be particularly psychological, and if you have suggestions later on that might make it more… disturbing, abhorrent, morally, intelligently galling, anything like that, please, tell me. I take all reviews seriously.


	2. Chapter 2

I stared blankly at the gray walls, devoid of life and culture and everything that makes life alive. In my head, I was far, far away, farther than any person should have the right to go, but there I was. In my fantasy, the world was bright and new. Grass was green, billboards didn't have to stretch for miles to be seen, children didn't kill children with cars made of fear, and life was happy and content for everyone. No one rushed in my happy, kind, insulated little universe, in fact, it was considered unhealthy and rude to do so. Fathers came home to their daughters and read them books, rather than burning the books, setting the children in front of the parlor walls, and forgetting to come home after dark.

Then, with as much warning as the beauty came, it disappeared. Like fog before the harsh, burning sun, my hope drained away, the last bubbles from a bath washing down a drain.

A guard stood at the door, dressed in gray, like the walls. It's face was covered, to repress individuality and beauty and everything that constitutes the human soul. A person is not a person without a face. Even their voices and names were taken, replaced with automated voice boxes and numbers. In a way, they were worse off than myself.

It opened the door, heavily gloved hand making a noise like crunching leaves on the harsh gray metal of the barred door. "Follow" it said, in it's numb mechanical not-voice. I knew not to disobey. "Pain comes to girls who misbehave" sneered a police officer in my mind, holding a white hot "O" brand. Obedience indeed.

Nothing teaches a hard lesson like pain. Hard, burning pain.

I stared down at my left hand, massaging the bright white, circular burn scar. No, lessons were taught to be remembered here, and obedience is one I will never forget. Soullessly, I trailed after the guard and his alien-ness, his inability to even give the semblance of humanity. I wondered briefly if he was actually a robot, made to be the closest ting to human possible, but crueler and harsher and emptier and endless.

I learned not to expect anything from the guards. Food was eaten in the mess hall, where mosaic-ed glass panes separated us from the servers, mauling their muffled voices into a mechanical garble that nearly drove one insane. Speaking was prohibited for everyone but the servers, who could only speak to other servers behind the mosaic-wall, and only for the purpose of making and delivering food. Here, in this gray and white and inhuman place, people were reduced to insects, surviving their daily lives painfully and unhappily. I could see the other prisoners, the other 'rogue militants' brought in by the takers, the others like me that still harbored an imagination and enough desire to express it and change the world from it's morally invisible self. I could see them, and know them, but only just. Every moment, we were taped and recorded, every conversation monitored by the hovering-guard/nannies posted at each table. Conversations in code were next to impossible, unless you already knew someone and had one established, paper was unavailable, and all movement was monitored for possible emotion or speaking. If you were deaf here, then you could only watch. Watch and be afraid, because you could neither talk, nor speak, nor move in any way at all. I thanked a god (someone else's, not mine, for God is a delusion in a world of pointlessness. How could I ask someone that couldn't save us from ourselves for help? It's absurd) that I was not deaf.

I sat next to a woman today, tall, blonde; she might have been beautiful, had she not been so distraught and empty. There was food on my plate, and I began to eat, grimacing at the non-flavor of the gray mush. It reminded me of school cafeteria food, and I smiled. Suddenly, a hot poker struck me in the back, searing a white hot line of fire down my spine. The guard/nanny pulled away from me, it's blue glowing weapon pulsating from use. "No happiness."

That was the rule there. Emotions were forbidden, if that was even possible. We were trained to be soulless automatons. Wake up. Go to mess. Go to emotion training. Go to mess. Go to cell. End of day.


	3. Chapter 3

I was running, running, as fast as I could, down the hallways, anger rushing through my body like fire and lava. Now was the time! Now was the time to escape this horrid place! No one, no guard, no nanny, no server, no other prisoner, no one!

THREE HOURS EARLIER:

The burn on my back stung as the nanny drifted away, it's mildly feminine body stiff and hard. The woman next to me sighed in sympathy, her face revealing nothing. I chanced a glance at her face, and had to bite my tongue to stop any noise from escaping. Her hair was sheared off close to her chin and her eyes had attained that lost look that only comes from the deepest and most world-swallowing loneliness, but I still recognized her. It was Alice. I'm sure my face paled, but it no longer mattered. Pain, suffering; no it was all irrelevant now. My sister had found her way back to me. Nothing could have made me want to smile more. I scooted closer to her, placing my hand on top of hers surreptitiously. She made to move away in disgust, but stopped abruptly, like a freight train hitting a wall. Her face froze like a rose dropped in liquid nitrogen and I saw a flicker of horror and joy twitch across her beleaguered face, an explosion of expression compared to what I had become horribly accustomed to. Tears welled in her gray eyes, like diamonds they were, cold hard things, full of regret and apologies. I shook my head, a smile full of pain threatening to twitch my lips. No, what had she to apologize for? She and my grandfather had enriched my life to the fullest, and I couldn't thank her enough.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the nanny move toward us menacingly, and I jumped farther away from Alice. I sighed internally. I wanted nothing to separate from her, but it wasn't worth the sensory deprivation torture. I shuddered at the memory of the black pit, the rubber gloves, the soundless hole of memories.

Nothing, not even my sister could put me back in the Pit. Not the Pit. Never the Pit.

From behind me, I could feel a nanny pressing against my back, watching me, measuring me. It put a metal gloved hand on my shoulder, yanking me away from Alice forcefully. I couldn't keep a whimper of anger out of my breath, and the nanny pressed its electrified weapon into my back, straight into my spine. I screamed, and the world went black.


	4. Note     this is not a chapter

Hey guys, sorry that last chapter was so short, stuff has been getting in the way. You know, life, that kind of crap. Clarisse is in serious trouble, and we're about to go into a looong flashback.. (sorry, it has to happen to make the story flow.)

I don't mean to be a review whore, but if you happen to have an opinion, let me know. I'm a bit short on ideas for the next part, even though I already know where this story is going. I don't know exactly how to get Clarisse and her sister together and out of the jail-type-place. Any ingenious escapee ideas? I'm open to it all.

: D


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